How many challenge dice are typical?

By Mark Theurer, in WFRP Gamemasters

Hi all,

In doing prep for an upcoming adventure I wondered if other people went up from the automatic one (1) challenge die on combat actions. In looking back I could probably count the number of times I've used more than one of them on just a few fingers of one hand. Wonder if I've been too "soft" all this time :)

Mark

I go by the core rules for number of challenge dice in attack vs defence actions (1). As my PC's have gotten tougher (once they were in 30's and now 40's for # advances) I have used more "greater" style monsters which have an automatic +1 Challenge die to all actions against them (either official ones or making a creature 'greater' with this an a couple of other mods).

Occassional exceptional circumstance modifiers may increase challenge dice but usually they apply misfortune dice. Usually, if a player is rolling more it's because they use an action that includes that as an action modifier.

Outside combat, for actions, if rules don't dictate then I use 2 challenge dice as the typical roll vs, since that is "average" difficulty.

valvorik said:

Outside combat, for actions, if rules don't dictate then I use 2 challenge dice as the typical roll vs, since that is "average" difficulty.

I'm planning on exactly the same thing. I had also considered making attacks have a default difficulty of 2 dice (instead of 1) but am worried that will slow down combat too much? As for magic, I had considered upping it 1 dice also (1d for normal casting, 2d for quick casting). But, I was also worried this would make magic way too difficult?

In the end I'm going to try it with the default difficulties for attacks (1d) and magic (0d) but start with other tasks at 2d (average). If it goes to easy, I may bump combat and magic up 1d, just not sure yet.

Most rolls I make for most tasks are usually 2 challenge, vs target defence is the 1 challenge plus there actual defence. Most things that I come across are average checks and it's a nice surprise when you get one for an easy check.